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Car Hire with French Driving Licence


minnie
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There's quite a lot being made of inability to hire a car with UK plastic licence and no paper part, due to inability to establish points. What happens with hiring with a pink cardboard French Licence? There's no pints recorded on that and we've never had a problem with hiring a car in either UK or New Zealand using that.
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Not sure about car hire but as a point of interest my daughter who holds a French permis is moving to Texas to live in the near future and has been told her permis is accepted there but her husband to be who holds a UK licence will have to take a Texas state driving test as his is not accepted!
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That could happen to us if we moved to New Zealand. UK licences would be swopped directly but French Licence would mean a test. If we were thinking of going down that route I'd probably, temporarily, become resident in UK and then swap back to UK licence.

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Just because you have a French licence that doesn't negate your

entitlement to a UK one although both cannot be held at the same time.

If

UK licence is exchangeable in NZ then a DVLA letter of entitlement

should suffice to obtain one without any question of taking a test.

Regarding hiring in UK with a French licence the new rules apply to UK licences only, with some 28 member states, all with totally different licence regimes, it can't be any other way can it !

Sometimes desperately hanging on to that UK licence is not the best idea [;-)]

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Thanks AnOther. We wouldn't be going back to UK just because of the driving licence issue but it's simpler to go through the immigration procedures for New Zealand from UK than from France - especially with pets who require quarantine. Even sorting out containers for personal effects is easier. However that may happen sometime in the future, partly dependent on whether UK stays in EU.....

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[quote user="Kong"]I've swapped for a french licence and it hasn't stopped me being able to hire cars here or in the UK.[/quote]I don't understand why anybody would think that hiring a car in UK, or any other country for that matter, with a French licence would be any different than with a UK one or why it should present any sort of problem whatsoever.

Hire companies are concerned only that you are entitled to drive their cars not what your nationality is or where you happen to be living at any point in time.

For UK licence holders they have some form of process to establish your entitlement which may be compromised by convictions and that was by the paper counterpart but is now by the code number you need, obviously they have no such facility for non UK licence holding customers.

I have a French licence but bizarrely I just went to the DVLA site and punched in the information from my old UK photocard licence which expired in March this year yet was still given a code number valid for 3 days !

I then went to the site for verifying the code and from the information returned I can see no reason why a car hire company would not have rented me a car based purely on that with no actual licence being produced, UK or French !

I have only redacted my name from this printout:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/CyKgkLe.jpg[/img]

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  • 1 month later...
I have a French D Licence , in my maiden name as is the legal situation here . My passport is in my British legal married name. UK and French credit cards also in married name. I need to go back to England soon. Will I have any problems with these two different names, does anyone know? Kong, I have assumed you are male . PS We are resident in France. Any ladies out there? Thanks in advance.
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My French licence is in my maiden name but says "epouse abc" so easy to see what my married name is.

I used it in Québec with no problems and in fact they were pleased it was in French!

Does your licence not say something similar?

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[quote user="mrsblack"]Strangely enough my signature is my married one.[/quote]

That is the point I am pinning my hopes on as with my married signature + my passport, and my married signature therein, I am hoping to be OK !

Sue

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Thanks Sue, like you I will pin my hopes on the very similar signatures (thank goodness!) and the previous poster's suggestion of photocopy of marriage certificate. A previous post suggested having a photocopy of one's previous UK licence, but alas, too late for me as I handed it back upon receipt of my French one. A positive note will be that it will be easier to explain it all at the car hire desk in one's native language.

my husband has pointed out that this must contravene an equality law somewhere, but as the French system refers to it as birth name not maiden name they are probably OK.

A good thing we ladies have handbags to carry all the paperwork! Thanks again.

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Rather then a photocopy of a marriage certificate which being a copy they would likely not accept anyway there is nothing to stop you applying to DVLA for a letter of entitlement.

Sure

it will cost you a fiver but it will be in your married name and as far as a UK hire company are concerned will probably trump a French licence !
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When we swapped to a French licence I asked for an international driving licence as well ... it was free and we have carried it when hiring a car overseas. However, our French licences have sufficed when hiring in the USA and New Zealand - nobody's asked to see the international one yet!
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[quote user="Kong"]I didn't think you would be entitled to a French and

English licence simultaneously?[/quote]That's true but not what I said nor

what I'm saying.

The letter of entitlement says that you are ENTITLED to hold a UK licence not that you actually do.

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Fair enough. But then the pedantic guy at the desk might say 'I don't care about your right to hold a licence - I wish to see a valid licence'. Frankly we are wasting bytes discussing this. I don;t believe the OP will have a problem.

I tried to put a smiley in here but like all the forums recently updated things don't really work properly. Glad I've retired from IT (big smile).
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"I have a French D Licence , in my maiden name as is the legal situation

here . My passport is in my British legal married name. UK and French

credit cards also in married name. I need to go back to England soon.

Will I have any problems with these two different names, does anyone

know? Kong, I have assumed you are male . PS We are resident in France.

Any ladies out there? Thanks in advance."

This is one of the reasons I DID NOT change my name when I got married (again) almost 30 yrs ago.  Everything is now in my maiden name, which I had to change back to by deed poll when I divorced my first husband, as I did change to his name when we married., and almost immediately regretted it.

Ah well. I was young and foolish then, definitely older, and hopefully wiser now!

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